Chapter Text
Attempting to raise Mollymauk Tealeaf from the dead only to find out that his soul was not free to return was a nasty shock, to say the least.
Jester tried first, and then in the midst of her panicked babbling Caduceus dipped into their stash of diamonds a second time and gathered three of them together to try again. He came to the same realization that she had and proved able to make use of his more formal training as a cleric to convey what that realization meant.
Raising the dead could only work if the soul was free and willing to return to the prime material plane. None of them who had known Molly doubted that he would have been willing to return to life. And it would have been another matter if the ritual had simply failed, if they’d established the connection but been unable to strengthen it enough to guide his soul back to them.
“But something blocked us,” Caduceus said grimly, as they sat huddled under the dome that night a scarce hundred feet away from the dug-up grave. The bones in their tapestry had been placed carefully back inside it just for now.
“Something bad,” Jester added, in little more than a whisper.
After that, well, of course there was nothing for it but to find out what was keeping them from their friend so it could be dealt with. Caduceus communed daily with the Wildmother to narrow down their avenues of search. Jester attempted to scry and was blocked immediately, but was at least able to confirm that Molly was on another plane of existence. Even then, they spent two days in Zadash, two days in Rohsohna, two in Uthodern, researching until they were half blind from it before Fjord woke up in a cold sweat from a memory that sent them back to Zadash as fast as Caleb could draw a teleportation circle.
“Cold and alone.” Caleb heard Fjord whispering that to himself as he waited for the last few lines to be drawn “Cold and alone…”
* * *
Tracking Cree down was entirely too much trouble for how increasingly dire the situation was starting to seem. Yasha in particular was little more than a grim force of nature at that point, ready to beat the answers out of Cree if that was what it took, but by the time they dragged the tabaxi out of hiding she turned out to be so desperate for help that she told them everything and then some with no provocation.
Lucien had been a man of boundless ambition, ready to do or give anything in pursuit of his goals. That had included making a deal with one of the minor demon princes of the Abyss – a deal for more power in life in exchange for his soul after death.
Caleb would never forget the look of dawning horror in Cree’s eyes as she finally started to realize why they must have come, why they’d gone to the trouble of dragging her out of the Gentleman’s tunnels and into the attic of the Leaky Tap. “He, he didn’t think it would come to that. If the plan had worked, he would have escaped it…”
She couldn’t finish the thought. Caleb finished it for her. Lucien had escaped his deal, for a time – he had died, and Mollymauk had been born. The soul had carried on, after a fashion, though in a way that Caleb could tell from Cree's reactions had never been the plan. Lucien had never, would never have intended to be reborn so utterly changed.
Joy can fill a lot in a person’s life, Caleb remembered Mollymauk saying, in a moment when he’d been unable to lie. He dug his nails into his palms until they nearly bled.
But then Molly had died, and he’d cast no ritual to ensure that was not the end of it. He’d died thinking only of saving his friends and so the demon that Lucien had made his deal with had come to collect, uncaring that the soul it had torn free from the corpse had taken a different name.
It was Beau, of course, who said what they all were afraid to. “That was months ago,” she whispered, eyes wide, face bloodless. “Fuck. Fuck.”
It took all of them together to hold Yasha back when she went for Cree’s throat, and it took three castings of a calming spell from Caduceus before she stopped trying.
“We need her alive,” Caleb pleaded frantically, as he felt the whipcord tension thrumming through her slowly start to ease. “We can’t save him without her help. But we will, Yasha. We will.”
* * *
Cree didn’t know the demon’s name, but she was able to point them at the last hideout the Tomb Takers had occupied before scattering. Since they’d expected to be back, and no one else had known about it, they’d left some things behind.
Finding Lucien’s notes required going over most of the building with a fine-toothed comb before Nott found a loose cobblestone in a seemingly random patch of hallway. Actually decoding Lucien’s notes took Caleb and Jester another full day, and Jester still burst into tears of frustration halfway through it.
But eventually, they found the name they needed. And, on the dawn of the day that followed, the Mighty Nein all joined hands in a circle, and Caleb spoke the name of their destination down in the Abyss, and they all vanished together from the patch of barren woodlands outside the Tomb Takers’ hideout.
Their target was not the Demogorgon itself, but simply one of its servitors who held a fortress on the outer edges of the Gaping Maw. Even so, the great, spiraling towers of the palace Abysm could be clearly seen on the horizon despite the distance, and their twisted spires felt as if they were constantly watching the Mighty Nein. The very force of their presence bore down mercilessly.
It was a heavy weight on all their minds – out of nowhere, Nott drew a dagger on Fjord and actually tried to use it, screaming at him for being a thief. After that, Fjord refused to sleep or rest, muttering to himself that they were all planning to hurt him, they were all ready to hurt him, and he wouldn’t be caught unawares. Even Jester soon succumbed to the creeping madness of the place – she was cheerfully eager to kill anything in their path, anything that stood between them and Molly, even when Caleb tried to plead with her to remember that their only hope of getting out of there with their friend was to be quiet and stealthy. Sometimes Beau or Yasha could hold her back. Sometimes they couldn’t.
Caleb could feel the madness trying to overtake him, too, could feel it pressing down on his mind until cracks started to form. Sometimes he wondered if the hyperfocus he developed to resist it was a form of madness in its own right. He simply…refused to allow himself to break until they found Molly. Nothing else mattered. He could let himself succumb after the job was done. He knew that he probably would. Time for that later.
They finally breached the fortress and fought their way in to confront the demon lord – a glabrezu, to be precise, who went by the name of Ghorvash. Caleb tried to negotiate on their behalf, tried to tell whatever lie he could that might get them what they needed, but he could tell immediately that the monster disdained their efforts and Jester cut the negotiations short anyway by firing a guiding bolt at it without warning.
It was a bloody, brutal battle even by the bloody, brutal standards of their lives so far. Ghorvash summoned more, weaker demons to divide their efforts and give it a chance to lay into them with fists, pincers, and magic. Yasha very nearly died from its pincers nearly cutting her in half, but lived through it thanks to Caduceus’ Death Ward and Fjord’s quick intervention to heal her once she’d staggered back to her feet. Jester wasn’t so lucky – one final, brutal blow from its enormous fists slammed her so hard into the floor that it left a crater around her motionless, lifeless body.
The fighting grew even more frantic, after that, desperate to put an end to their foe in time to make use of a revivify spell. After Nott put out one of its eyes, Caleb finally got a chance to slam it to its knees with Cat’s Ire, and then Fjord was there to finish the job, sword aglow with the light of the Wildmother and a radiant moonbeam at his back.
As soon as the tumult died down, Caduceus bolted for Jester, his staff already glowing. Caleb left him to it. Moving like a puppet or a man possessed, he instead crossed the wrecked and ruined throne room towards the glabrezu's corpse. His gaze remained fixed on a black choker it wore around its neck, from which hung a carved black gemstone.
It had taken him far too long to realize that the fiend had been using it as an extra reserve of power. It had taken him even longer to realize how. But now the dust was settling, and Caleb was too exhausted to feel the dawning horror as anything more than a faint numbness in his fingertips.
It was a fairly small gemstone considering the glabrezu’s size, big enough to just barely fit in the palm of one of Caleb’s hands.
He had just enough time to realize that much before he was suddenly, violently assaulted with a storm of howling emotion and boundless pain.
For what might have been a second or an hour or a hellish eternity, Caleb was subsumed in someone else’s grief. The second he laid hands on the gemstone there was suddenly a presence there, in his head and all around him, clawing at him, clinging to him. It had no voice to scream with, not truly, but the shape of words echoed through his mind all the same – it’s dark it’s cold it hurts I’m scared please let me go please please please…
“Caleb!”
He was brought forcibly back to reality by a sharp slap across the face, hard enough to send the gemstone flying from his hands and spinning away along the floor. Caleb stared after it in shock. It took him a second to recognize the sound of his own gasping breaths, to realize that there were tears on his cheeks.
“Caleb?” Nott asked, more quietly. He managed to force himself to look round at her. His little friend was rubbing life back into her hand and staring at him with wide yellow eyes. “Are you okay? Are you, I mean, um, you? What was that?”
As one, their gazes slid over to where the gem lay amidst the rubble. Caleb swallowed hard, rubbed fiercely at his eyes, then got to his feet to stagger over and retrieve it. “Wait!” Nott cried, catching his wrist – he shook her off and kept walking. She tried again, this time digging in her heels, but with a strength he didn’t know he had he shook her off and kept going. At that point, she turned to the others. He heard her calling out anxiously: “S-Someone? Anyone? Something’s really weird with Caleb right now!”
He barely heard her. He didn’t care. A not-insignificant part of Caleb recoiled at the idea of touching the gem again. His head was so full of rot at the best of times. He didn’t need to invite more in.
But the rest of him – the parts of him that had slowly, inexorably grown better since that early morning on Glory Run Road – made sure he kept going. He knelt down before the gem and gathered it up in both hands.
The psychic assault started up again immediately, but this time Caleb was braced for it. “Shh,” he whispered, even as his eyes filled with tears, even as the weight of someone else’s fear and pain grew nearly physical, heavy enough to bow him beneath it. He curled himself around the gem, cradled it against his chest, and held on anyway. “Shh, Mister Mollymauk. It’s all right, I’m here now. We’re all here for you. Everything will be all right.”
He spoke the words aloud as much for his own sake and the sake of his assembled friends as he did for the trapped soul, unsure if Molly could hear him at all. Just in case, he tried to think and feel the words as hard as he could, tried to project his thoughts and feelings outward in the way he did to communicate with Frumpkin or even with Nott across a copper wire. Physical contact with the gem opened a connection, it seemed, and a connection could go both ways.
It took an enormous mental effort to hold his ground, to not break down beneath the thoughts and fears being forced upon him because the one they belonged to was at their limit. But Caleb gritted his teeth, counted his breaths, and held fast against the storm. He let it pass through and around him without taking hold of him, and all the while he tried to project a sense of calm and peace and connection. I hear you. I know you. I’m here.
Slowly, so slowly he didn’t realize right away that it was happening, the tumult in his mind grew quieter. The trapped spirit grew calmer – this seemed to surprise them as much as it relieved him. After all this time, they’d probably forgotten what it was like to be comforted and calmed, and the shock of it helped cut through the storm of emotion. He understood, so much and so well that it hurt.
So the oppressive presence all around him eased, until Caleb was aware only of a newfound warmth in the gem he held cradled in both hands. It was a soft, gentle heat, which it pulsed in time to the rabbit-like racing of his own heart, and he almost fancied he could see a faint pinprick of light beneath its faceted surface which brightened and dimmed to the same rhythm. Caleb smiled wearily to see it, and then startled when a strong, scarred hand reached into his field of view to run feather-light fingertips over the smooth black gem.
“You think Mollymauk is really in there?” Yaska asked quietly. He looked up to see her gaze fixed on the jewel, and that all the rest of the Mighty Nein had gathered around him, too.
Throat tight, weary beyond words, Caleb nodded.
“So,” Jester whispered, twisting her fingers anxiously in front of her. “So if we, like, break it – would that set him free?”
“It might,” Caduceus said. “But it also might hurt him. That kind of shock…if this situation is what it looks like, I’m not sure if he could take that. At least not without a body to return to. Let’s, ah. Let’s get him back to where he should be. Then we’ll try that ritual again. How’s that sound?”
It sounded good to all of them, right up until Jester and Caduceus compared the contents of their packs and realized that bringing Jester back had cost them enough diamonds that they no longer had enough to attempt another resurrection ritual. Acquiring more wouldn’t be a problem in and of itself – they’d looted plenty of gold and treasure from Ghorvash’s fortress so far – but Caleb still wasn’t capable of teleporting them more than once per day without the aid of a teleportation circle. That would mean at least two nights’ rest before they could try to bring Molly back again, two more nights for Molly himself to suffer in darkness and isolation. Knowing how long he’d been trapped so far didn’t make the comparatively small delay any easier – quite the opposite, in fact. It felt like failure, felt like betrayal, like uselessness that Molly was having to pay for.
If only we’d thought to bring his bones, Caleb mused bitterly to himself, as they all bedded down for the night in the picked-clean shell of the Tombtakers’ old hideout. They could have cast the ritual as soon as they acquired the diamonds if they’d just had Molly’s bones with them, rather than needing to waste another teleport to get them back to Glory Run Road. But they’d rewrapped the remnants of their friend after the first failed attempt and reburied him back in his grave. It had felt right, at the time. Now it felt foolish, careless, thoughtless.
We are getting too good at leaving you behind, my friend, Caleb thought bitterly, as he kept his watch alongside Frumpkin, safe within the confines of the hut. Even keeping watches at all was a testament to their collective restlessness rather than necessity. We are getting too much practice at burying you.
And yet, as he caught sight of Yasha stirring fitfully in her sleep, Caleb realized that there was still something he could do to help make things easier on everyone.
Moving gingerly, stepping over Fjord and sidling around Nott, he knelt down beside Yasha and gave her shoulder a firm shake. She came awake quickly enough, blinking blearily in the dim light of the dome before managing to focus on him.
“Take over for me,” Caleb whispered, nodding toward the spot he’d just vacated. And then: “I’ll take over for you.” He rested a hand lightly over hers’, where they were clenched tightly around the soul gem, just as they had been for hours so far.
It still took her a second to understand what he was getting at. Then Caleb saw her hesitate, visibly. He saw her press the gem closer to her chest protectively, apparently on instinct. “I’m all right,” she murmured.
Caleb wavered for a moment, wondering how best to say what he truly wanted to say, then decided to go for broke. “I want to,” he said. “I, I just. I want to be close to him. For a while. Please, Yasha. I’ve missed him, too. Not as much as you have, I’m certain, I just—” He ran out of steam, he ran out of words. Caleb’s shoulders slumped, his gaze fell to the floor, and he bit back a sigh. “Please.”
One second passed, then two, then three, until Caleb felt her take hold of his hands, felt her guide them to uncurl and open. He let himself be guided, and then he felt the cold, heavy weight of the jewel laid against his palms.
Immediately, he curled his fingers around it and held it tight. Then he looked up just in time to see Yasha nod in tentative approval.
“It really seems to help if you keep him close,” she said, laying a hand just over her heart for evidence. Even in the dimness, Caleb saw the shadow pass across her eyes before she added: “Please keep him close, Caleb.”
“I will,” Caleb whispered, clutching the gem so tightly that his knuckles started to hurt. “I promise.”
Whatever she saw on his face seemed to satisfy her. Yasha even smiled, brief and weary, before she moved away to take over keeping watch, leaving Caleb to settle down in the space between Beau and Jester that she’d left behind. After a moment, he even rucked up his shirt so he could press the gem more directly against his heart. It was cold, at first, cold enough to make his breath catch. But then the icy chill started to fade, then the smooth black surface started to warm. Maybe it was a sign that he was reaching Molly, that his friend was calmed by his presence. Maybe it was simply a natural transfer of heat. Caleb decided to let himself hope, just this once, and closed his eyes.
It was easier than he expected to sleep.
His dreams were fevered, strange, and deep.
In his dreams, he and Molly were both naked, both bared to each other, both sprawled in a tangle of limbs together in a warm, soft space that might have been a bed without end. They were both kissing one another desperately, frantically, trying to press closer though not a breath could pass between them, as if neither would be content until they’d crawled inside each other.
“Please, Caleb,” Molly gasped against his mouth. “Oh, please don’t let go.”
“Never,” Caleb vowed, furrowing his fingers in Molly’s hair and pressing their brows together. “Molly, my Mollymauk, I’m here, I’m sorry, ich liebe dich…”
After that, there were no more words. There was no more breath to spare and no more time to waste. There was only warmth, touch, and joining.
He woke feeling disoriented but well-rested, still holding tight to the gem. He woke remembering enough of the dream to make his heart speed up when he dwelled on it, to make him dart an anxious glance around to see if anyone might have noticed him getting worked up in the night. He couldn’t see anything in their expressions – Caleb still wasn’t necessarily good at reading people, but some of his friends were also very bad at masking their true feelings, especially when the opportunity for teasing presented itself. They simply seemed focused on the day ahead, as he knew he should be.
So he simply stole a moment in the frenzied early morning rush of packing to duck unnoticed into a corner, stare down thoughtfully at the gem for a long, long moment, and then bow his head to press a soft kiss to it.
He fancied that he felt a soft pulse of warmth in return, and felt the faintest of smiles tugging at his lips. He made sure to hide it before he went to pass the gem back to Yasha. Signs of life were good, signs of calm and acknowledgement were even better. But there was still work to be done today.
Admittedly, there wasn’t much work. Caleb got them to Zadash, Jester and Caduceus went and bought enough diamonds for four resurrections, Fjord and Nott went to restock on healing potions, Beau and Yasha kept him company while they thought about where to stay for the night. Beau suggested, half serious, that they set out from the city today anyway – even if they wouldn’t make it anywhere near to their destination before having to rest, at least they wouldn’t be stuck with the sense of staying still while a friend was suffering.
Caleb half seriously considered taking her up on her plan, but forced himself to take a deep breath and reconsider.
In the end, they bought themselves a night in the Pillow Trove.
And, all throughout the day, they took their turns with the gem, holding it close and tight to share their presence with Molly and make sure he knew that he wasn’t alone anymore. Once or twice, Caleb even overheard some of them murmuring quietly to it. They told one another that it was for the sake of giving each other a break from bearing the burden of another soul. They all knew that this was only half-true – now that Molly was out of hell and safely in the keeping of the Mighty Nein once more, there weren’t any further incidents of empathic blowback. It wouldn’t really have been that much of a strain for only one of them to take charge of the jewel until they could attempt another resurrection ritual.
But they all wanted to be close to him and, until tomorrow, this was the only way they could be.
“Do you think he knows we’re going to fix him?” Jester asked quietly, as she and Caleb sat on the floor of her room, sharing a plate of fruit. “He knows we’re not going to just leave him as a rock forever, right?”
Caleb let his eyes drift to Fjord, who was currently taking charge of the gem as he spoke in a low voice with Caduceus. He let himself mull over the fact that, for those who had been hit the hardest by their trip into the Demogorgon’s domain, holding the black jewel seemed to be an additional comfort. A day had been enough for him to see that the trip had left its marks on the minds of his friends – the way Fjord kept them all at arm’s length, the way Nott flinched if any of them came too close and watched them all with wary yellow eyes, the way Jester was unthinkingly aggressive to anyone who got in her way. But having the sense of caring for a friend seemed to help ground them.
It wasn’t a sustainable solution, but he was grateful for it for now.
“He knows, Jester,” Caleb said, and hoped he was right. “I’m sure he does. And tomorrow, he’ll see that his hopes are well-placed.”
In the end, no one put up a fuss or asked questions when Caleb quietly offered to take charge of Molly while they slept.
Once again, his dreams were intimate and intense. But this time, as he dreamed of making love to the tiefling he thought he’d lost his chance with, it was in a space that had the sense of grass beneath them and an open sky above. It was better, and it was warm, and they could be truly together again for a time.
* * *
No one spoke much the next morning. Everyone was simply intent on gulping down as much breakfast as they could respectively stomach, packing up their things, and waiting with varying degrees of visible impatience as Caleb drew a teleportation circle. Once the runes chalked onto the floor lit up with light, they all piled in, suffered through the brief sensation of falling and cold, and stumbled out once again between the twin hills halfway along Glory Run Road.
Yasha recovered her bearings first, and moved immediately to start digging up Molly’s grave for the third and hopefully final time. There was a brief discussion among the rest of the members of the Mighty Nein about who would join in on the resurrection ritual – in the end, it was decided that Jester would cast the spell, and that Caleb and Beau would join Yasha. No one even dared to question the idea that Yasha would lend her voice to the attempt as well.
Jester’s hands were shaking badly as she started to count out the required number of diamonds from her pack. She nearly spilled them all out over the grass before Caduceus drew close to her and held her steady. As Caleb watched them both, he heard a wince from just beside him, and glanced over to see that Beau had chewed a nail so fiercely that she’d drawn blood. She met his eyes in an unmistakable challenge when she saw him looking, and he was quick to look away.
After what felt like a minor eternity, Jester moved to stand beside the worm-eaten tapestry and called the other three over to join her. Yasha’s hands were steady as she reached down to unwrap it, revealing a pathetic pile of bones and tattered cloth. But Caleb caught sight of the tears shining in her eyes as she straightened up, stepped quickly back, and quietly awaited her turn.
Jester spoke the incantation she’d had to speak too many times. The diamonds shattered, and the dust hovered above Molly’s remains, lit with a radiant inner light that cast fragmented rainbows over all of them. And then, as her chanting slowed, the others stepped forward one by one to fulfill their part.
Beau went first. Her offering was a small bottle of ink, identical in hue to the tattoo of an everseeing eye that now graced her back. “I know you’re going to give me shit over this, so just, just come back already so we can get it over with.”
Yasha stepped forward next. She drew the battered, dogeared book of manners from her pocket, opened it up, and pulled free a sprig of silk snapdragons. “I saved these,” she said simply, and laid them down tenderly on the tapestry beside the bones. “I always think of you when I look at them. And I’ve never stopped missing you.” Her voice broke at last, and Caleb saw the tears start to fall like diamonds down her cheeks “Please come back to me, Mollymauk.”
And then it was his turn. Caleb’s offering had been chosen for him – he would complete the ritual by shattering the soul gem here, safe within the web of Jester’s power, so as to hopefully set Molly free with minimal shock or damage.
After that…well, after that, they had no way of knowing what would happen next, and that terrified him.
But Caleb made himself step forward anyway, cradling the gem in his hands.
“You died for us,” he whispered, staring at the bones, staring at the tapestry they rested on. He thought back to a sunlit morning so many months ago when Molly had come bounding up to him out of the festival crowd and demanded he look for magic because everything around him was just so wonderful . “We’ve tried to live for you. But it’s…oh, Mister Mollymauk, it has been so hard sometimes. We miss you. And you deserve the chance to live for yourself, too.” He tightened his grip around the stone until his knuckles stood out white. He cursed himself for the feeling of tears stinging at his eyes. “We have a home now. You can have a home. And we will never leave you again.”
He knew he couldn’t promise that, not really.
He sealed the promise anyway with a spark of power into the soul gem that shattered it like glass and set Mollymauk Tealeaf free.
Everything after that was chaotic and indistinct, a torrent of light and wind and power and shouting, a force projected outward that nearly made Caleb lose his footing. But he planted his feet and shielded his eyes and eventually, the tumult died down into nothing more than his friends frantically asking one another if they were okay.
Yasha’s gasp brought everyone’s attention snapping back to the tapestry and, as he blinked his vision clear, Caleb saw immediately why she’d cried out.
The bones were rearranging themselves into a proper skeleton, aided and guided by muscle and sinew growing from nowhere.
A few of the Mighty Nein looked hastily away. Caleb and Yasha didn’t look away once. He hated himself a little for being fascinated but, well…it was an undeniably unique sight.
And, perhaps, a small part of him feared that if he didn’t see this through until the end, it somehow wouldn’t really happen. Whatever Yasha’s reasons might have been, those were his.
So he watched until the end. He watched until the pathetic pile of bones turned themselves back into a tiefling whose lavender skin was adorned in tattoos of many colors and who’s red eyes opened wide to stare wildly around at them all.